We’re in the trenches with you. That’s one of the things that AcceleratingCFO prides itself on — being hands-on as a fellow entrepreneurial business. While we provide guidance to our clients on specific areas, we also learn a great deal from them as well.

In this blog, we thought we’d share some of the inward-facing goals and action steps that AcceleratingCFO is pursuing as we grow our business — right alongside you.

Expanding our reach to clients in other territories and markets without compromising the quality of our work is one of the ways that we are adjusting to the current working environment, among others:

1. 1. Identifying states/markets with growing populations: One of the trends that we have noticed is the amount of people moving to states outside of New York to lower their state tax bill. In addition, the younger generations are future entrepreneurs and small business owners, many of whom remain in their college towns after graduation. As a result, we have focused on future customer growth in Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee (to name a few). We are examining what’s happening across the country, working to establish branches in markets that demonstrate population growth.
  2. Establishing an international presence: Prior to Covid, we actively explored other countries that were home to companies that would benefit from Fractional CFOs but did not utilize, or have access to, them. What we realized is that this dearth of Fractional CFOs in Europe, specifically, is reminiscent of the US ten years ago when we first started AcceleratingCFO. Back then, US companies were having a difficult time locating quality CFOs and controllers at a reasonable price. At this point in the pandemic, many European countries, such as the UK and Spain, have started to figure out that they can save money through outsourcing. One thing we realized is that our process and philosophy around financial analysis can be universally applied — since the goal of making money and maximizing cash flow is not confined to the US border. What we are able to do is leverage a process that we currently do in the US and apply it to international businesses who are seeking the holy grail: raising the company’s valuation and maximizing its profitability. We have helped clients over the years increase their market share in foreign countries through a similar process and strategy so when it came time for AcceleratingCFO to consider it as well, we were able to leverage lessons learned through working with our clients, making our deployment of an overseas strategy efficient and well-executed.
  3. Adding more personnel to the mix: We have helped many clients over the years increase their capacity through hiring successfully and onboarding efficiently. As our number of clients continued to increase year over year, we recognized the need to hire high-quality employees and consultants as soon as possible. This meant rethinking the number of employees needed plus increasing our original compensation budget. It’s almost impossible to find the perfect employee; but over the years, we identified common denominators across our team that we look for when searching for prospective partners, based on what we have identified as characteristics of successful CFPs and controllers. While board certifications and years of experience are easy to quantify, there are intangibles, such as attitude, leadership, and hard work ethic, that are required in order to take care of our clients in the AcceleratingCFO way.

So as you can see, even us “experts” don’t know it all either. We struggle with decisions and resource allocation and hiring/firing people just like all fellow entrepreneurs do. And although there are times that we stay up at night trying to come up with the right answers for both our clients and ourselves, we know that this is the purpose that we have in our professional lives. And we would not have it any other way!

Take-away: We pride ourselves on being the finance partner that all entrepreneurs can have access to. To learn more about how we help small businesses reach their potential faster, contact Scott or Brian at info@acceleratingcfo.com.

Brian Califano